


The Iron Price

by redcandle17



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 04:41:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The iron captain has fought the dragon queen's battles, but it's the Crow's Eye she married, leaving Victarion stewing in jealousy and resentment...for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Iron Price

The Iron Captain

The Crow’s Eye had always been without shame, but the dragon queen’s lack of modesty was scandalous. Her pale purple gown bared her bronzed shoulders and the top of her breasts, and as she walked, Victarion could plainly see the curves of her body beneath the wispy silk. The men leered at her openly and neither she nor the Crow’s Eye seemed to care.

Victarion cared. If she was his wife, he would forbid her to dress like a Lysene whore. _She should be **my** wife,_ he thought bitterly. It still rankled. He’d been so close to triumphing over Euron and claiming Daenerys Targaryen for his own. He’d paid the iron price for her many times over, slaying hundreds of her enemies. However _Silence_ had sailed into the harbor before Victarion could take the queen to wife.

“I told you true, didn’t I, brother?”

Victarion cursed himself. He could not afford to allow Euron to catch him unaware. The Crow’s Eye was more dangerous than ever. 

“She is the most beautiful woman in the world.” Euron gazed appreciatively at his bride, his blue eye sparkling and his blue lips smiling.

Victarion’s hands tightened into fists at his sides. He longed to gouge out that blue eye and bruise those blue lips. If the red priest Moqorro lived, more like than not it would have been Victarion who wedded Daenerys, Victarion who shared her bed.

_His death is on my hands_.

The knowledge that he could have averted all this was the salt that stung the wound. He _knew_ his brother, he _knew_ Euron could not be trusted, he _knew_ the dusky slave woman Euron had given to him would cause naught but ill, and still he had not acted.

It had cost Moqorro his life.

He’d killed the woman with his bare hands – he forced himself not to think of that other woman he’d killed with those hands– but her foul deed had already been done and now Victarion was without his most valuable man.

“And,” Euron lowered his voice to a mock whisper, “She loves to fuck.”

Victarion stayed silent. _He is trying to rile me._

“I fuck her until I am exhausted and yet she still wakes me in the middle of the night and rides my cock as wild as a Dothraki riding into battle.”

His smoldering black hand itched to bury his axe in his brother’s belly.

“She is everything I expected and more.” Euron’s smile grew wider and the glint in his eye more mocking. “I owe you much thanks for finding her and keeping her safe for me. Truly, there was never a brother more loyal than you.” 

Victarion did not remember moving but suddenly the Crow’s Eye was sprawled on the ground, his blue lips and white teeth a bloody mess.

The queen’s foreign shields surrounded her immediately, while the ironmen surrounded the Greyjoy brothers. No one moved to interfere. Victarion wanted nothing more than to fall upon Euron and hit him again and again until there was no strength left in his body. But…

_There is no man as accursed as the kinslayer._ That was the one belief every man - from the savages north of the Wall, to the poisoners of Dorne, to these foreign eunuchs– shared.

“What is the meaning of this?” Daenerys demanded. She pushed past her guards. “Why did you strike your brother – your king?” She asked Victarion.

“Victarion’s fists have always been near as quick as my wit,” Euron answered for him. He had climbed to his feet and now he poked at his jaw, checking for loose teeth.

Victarion frowned. It did not take a smart man to realize that Euron had provoked him into acting like a brute in front of the queen. _But why? He has won her. Why must he humiliate me in her eyes too?_

Daenerys turned from Victarion to her husband. She seemed angry at him, too. “The dragon must have three heads.” 

“But a head not so dull and ugly, surely,” the Crow’s Eye replied.

It was too much for Victarion. He did not understand what his brother and the queen were talking about, but he knew Euron had insulted him to his face. Again. He knocked his brother down again and this time the blood flowed from his nose. _He will not be so handsome with a broken nose._

Daenerys made a sound of disgust and turned away from them both. Her skirts fluttered and all men’s eyes followed her as she left them and climbed the steps to the massive marble chair that currently served her as a throne. “I will hear the day’s petitioners,” she announced, the Greyjoy brothers and their squabbles dismissed.

 

Victarion slept poorly that night. Several times he awoke reaching for his axe, and each time he was unable to remember the dream that so alarmed him. _The Crow’s Eye is to blame,_ he decided, as he broke his fast on roasted hunks of queer foreign meat. _He uses sorcery to torment me even in my sleep._ It was not the absurd thought it would have once been; Moqorro had taught Victarion the power of dreams and shown him all the things a sorcerer could do to a man without ever touching him. Victarion missed the black man. Moqorro would have known what Euron was up to and what Victarion ought to do.

_Daenerys. It’s all about her._

Moqorro had believed the dragon queen to be a savior whose birth was ordained by his red god, and Euron had wanted to possess her from the first he’d heard of her. Victarion knew only that she was unlike any other woman. _Moqorro would want me to protect her from the Crow’s Eye,_ he told himself.

True, Euron seemed happy with his wife now, but Victarion knew too well how quickly and viciously his brother’s mood could change. When they were very young, long before he grew his first beard, Euron had had a dog he claimed in puppyhood. The animal had shadowed his every footstep and slept beside his bed, until the day he kicked it off a bridge with no warning and no explanation beyond, “I tired of him.”

He knew what he had to do, and this time he would act before it was too late. Victarion honed his axe until it was as sharp as it’d ever been. He would not fail Daenerys.

At the feast that night he was seated in the place of honor at the queen’s right hand. To her left was her consort, Euron. The Crow’s Eye paid Victarion no attention. That was unusual. His brother was usually full of japes.

The feast passed quickly in a blur of stomach-churning foreign food and sickly sweet wine. The ironmen at the lower tables and the perfumed envoys alike were all drunk and rowdy by the time the moon had fully risen. A dozen nubile dancers of both genders ran out, clad only in glittering paint, and began to gyrate madly. Victarion watched them for a time, until he heard the queen draw a sharp breath.

He looked over at her. Her head was tilted back and her lips parted. He looked more closely. Her skirts had been lifted to her hips and her thighs were spread as wide as her chair would permit. Euron’s hand was between her legs. Victarion could not look away. The queen let out a soft moan, and his manhood stiffened within his breeches.

“Brother.” Euron was watching him. He smiled when Victarion met his gaze, and withdrew his hand from between his wife’s legs. He held out his glistening fingers. “Would you like a taste?”

By rights he should have chopped Euron’s hand off, but a madness seized Victarion. He suckled the fingers his brother offered him.

The Crow’s Eye seemed startled. Then he smiled. “Shall I offer him another taste, love?” he asked Daenerys.

“He may taste from the font if he wishes,” she replied.

Victarion stared at them, uncomprehending.

Euron laughed. “I don’t believe he knows what to do.” He slid from his chair. “I’ll demonstrate, brother.” He grasped his wife’s thighs and pulled her hips to the very edge of her seat. Then he pressed his face against her cunt. Victarion could hear him licking and slurping.

The queen moaned, more loudly than before. She looked at Victarion. “Kiss me, lord captain,” she commanded breathlessly.

Victarion kissed her harshly, but she only wrapped her arms around him and clutched him tight to her breasts and returned his kisses with fervor. He could not say how long it went on. He and Euron worked in harmony for once, him possessing the queen’s mouth while Euron feasted on her cunt. Finally she went limp in his arms and he knew it was over.

He settled back in his chair, still unable to think. His cock throbbed with need. Euron was licking his lips. Victarion did not realize his intention as he crawled to him, not until Euron had unlaced his breeches. “I told you my brother’s not so big where it counts,” the Crow’s Eye said, before he took almost the whole length of cock into his mouth. 

Victarion cuffed him in the head, and then bellowed in pain as Euron bit down. He wrenched his brother off of him and began to pummel him. He was distantly aware of Daenerys pounding his shoulders, but he could not hear the words she shouted at him. There was a storm raging in his ears.

Then everything went black.

 

He awoke in chains, bound to a wall in a room too well-lit and amendable to truly be called a dungeon. There were half a dozen armed men doing nothing but watching and seemingly waiting for him to awaken. 

_It was not some terrible dream._

One of the foreign guards grunted at another in their unintelligible language and the second one scurried out of the room. He returned several minutes later with another half a dozen men – and the dragon queen. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying, but there was nothing but anger on her face.

“Do you know what you have done?” she demanded.

“I killed my brother.” It felt queer to say the words and even queerer to think that it was true.

“Yes, you killed your brother – my husband and king, and the man whose fleet was to sail my army to Westeros.”

“The Iron fleet is mine. It was never Euron’s.”

“Then why did you subordinate yourself to him when he arrived here?”

“He is my elder brother, and the kingsmoot gave the driftwood crown to him.”

The anger left her, leaving only tiredness. She looked more a girl than he’d ever seen her. “What am I to do? I ought to feed you to Drogon, but your ironmen would not follow me without a leader of their blood and there are none among your lieutenants who could command the rest.”

She was right. Without a Greyjoy to command them, the captains of the iron fleet would disperse, each pirating his way back home to the iron islands.

Victarion did not mean to end up as a pile of dragon shit. “My quarrel was not with you, queen, it was with my brother. Had he not been my brother, I would have killed him long before this night. I am still willing to fight for you.”

“Your ironborn would follow a kingslayer and kinslayer?”

They had followed Euron. “The Crow’s Eye was not a godly man. None shall mourn him.”

She nodded her understanding. She was quiet for a long moment, as if thinking. Then she seemed to reach a decision. She moved closer to him and said, “I do not care what the cause of your quarrel with Euron was. You killed him out of jealously because you wanted me for yourself. You threw yourself at my feet and pleaded your love and I was moved by your passion.”

Victarion would never beg mercy from any man or woman, but he did not argue with her.

“The singers will sing of how great your love for me was. Do you understand?”

“Aye.” He didn’t, really, but he did not want her to think him stupid.

She spoke to the guards in their language and they unchained him. Victarion stretched. He had never been in chains before. It left a man sore.

“We will be married in a fortnight. Do you have anything to say?”

Victarion did not like being commanded so, but he was not fool enough to deny her. “I want to see my brother.”

“You’ll find him in the hall.” She turned and walked from the room, apparently done with him for the time being. 

 

The Crow’s Eye was laid out on a table atop cloth-of-gold. He had been bathed and dressed in his finest clothes, but his face was battered beyond recognition. Victarion gingerly put his hand on his forehead. He was cold. He was dead.

_At last._

He did not feel jubilant, though. It was strange. He had longed for this moment for years and now…

_He will torment me no more._

His blue eye did not sparkle.

_The Seastone Chair is mine._

He would never smile again.

_Daenerys is mine._

He would never jape again.

_I have avenged those he took from me._

His brother was dead.

Victarion wept – for the woman, for Balon, for the Damphair… and for Euron Greyjoy, the Crow’s Eye.


End file.
